Listen to the first album made by artificial intelligence
Futurists have been warning for years that robots are going to replace humans in jobs, but could they replace musicians now?
That’s the looming question with the release first ever album entirely composed by an Artificial Intelligence. ‘Hello World’ is a project released by SKYGGE (aka Benoit Carré) as experiment to show that AI “can be used to create new, compelling music, generating fresh musical material”.
The albums origins lie in a scientific project called Flow-Machines, an artificial intelligence system that can systematically create music based on it’s knowledge base and can be used with human interaction. Flow Machines was used to create the first entirely AI-composed pop song, Daddy’s Car a Beatle’s inspired, computer designed track.
For the creation of Hello World a bunch of musicians came together to help SKYGGE control and create music using Flow Machines. Musicians, composers, singers, producers, and sound engineers around the world skilled in (pop, electronic, ambient, and jazz) joined SKYGGE in the lab, including Kiesza and Stromae, to create an entire album that released in January.
SKYGGE said: “With this diversity of skills, we had a single objective: use these new technologies to create novel, interesting music, yet music that would please our ears. Most importantly, music that the artists wanted to make! Melodic twists, harmonic surprises, and timbral juxtapositions, with a strong sense of direction and the uncompromising goal of making really good music, music that can touch and challenge the fan base of the artists.”
The album’s title ‘Hello World’ takes inspiration from the first program that a beginner porgrammer writes. SKYGGE says: “These are the first words that AI utters in mainstream music.”
You can find out more about who was involved and the history of AI and music leading up to the creation of the first AI album from the album’s website, where you can also listen to Hello World!